Memoirs.....Musings of a sales guy at heart.....

Episode (10)

Madurai Days...

With a heavy heart and without any understanding of Madurai market, I left Salem and reached Madurai, the Temple City.

Madurai is a different kind of place compared to other places in TN. Difference in terms of everything. A city that never sleeps.  ''தூங்கா  நகரம்''. 24x7 food is available and people on the move. The reason being that Madurai is the trading center and right from Cumbam people come to Madurai for trading purpose. Also one of the biggest attraction is the Meenakshi Temple...such a huge temple with a very rich heritage and culture.

And people are so lovable and affectionate. I reach Madurai and after a couple of days in a hotel, move to SS colony. A single room on the second floor of an independant home. My first floor neighbor was a lady-Tamil-Citizen of Malaysia with her son and daughter to pursue their studies in Madurai..(could not understand why from KL to Madurai for studies)..and the second floor was just a room with huge terrace but for bathroom and toilet I have to climbdown and use the facilities at the ground floor. The owner of the place also ran a flour mill (for Dosa and idli atta) facility at the ground and on top of it another room where Kumar of Sandoz was staying....

That's the time TN has opened up further the liquor trade. They had given license to around 7 or 8 wholesalers and also opened up the retail trade to private. So its action time. My WS in Madurai was catering the entire Madurai (Dindigul included) district, Ramnad (Virudhunagar included) and Tirunelveli district. The Madurai WS was of MSR group and in Nagercoil the WS was of Nallaperumal and Sons...

MSR group-in 81, were well entrenched in Yanam and Pondy and slowly getting in to AP.  Madurai Ambika Wines was their foray into alcohol business in TN. While the chains were pulled from Chennai and Nellore, the operation in Madurai was managed by their trusted employees but all are from AP. Nandakumar, Venkatram and Prabhakar Reddy. MSR was known for his loyalty to the UB group. 

Shankaran my boss, did a decent induction for me but the focus again was more on Dipys as we had lots of issues. HL just changed the distribution in Madurai from Meenakshi Agencies to Amaran Traders. We had distributors everywhere...Dindigul, Rajapalayam, Tenkasi, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and also in Nagercoil.

Its similar for Dipys like any other place in TN (Coimbatore and Chennai were exceptions). Tough market conditions added to that was the change in distribution. Amaran, my distributor, young guy and after his graduation, his dad pushed him to get in to distribution. He used to live in Aruppukkottai and come to Madurai by bus-an hours journey. Very sweet guy and absolutely had no clue about distribution. So, I have to start from ground zero again...but I had good distributor in Rajapalayam (Gnanam-very enterprising and friendly distributor) and Mani in Nagercoil. So first couple of months on market familiarisation. I realised I have to get maximum from KK district as due to its Kerala influence, the awareness was better on food stuff and also people were used to jams, squashes and sauces. Kodaikanal was good for this category but didnt contribute much to Dipys. Rajapalayam was also decent due to Gnanam. Tirunelveli was quite tough. Ramnad was small and the only market we could sell some was Virudhunagar. Barring KK district rest of the areas really sizzle during summer time. 

I had a good start there. Professionally, I had to get the numbers done on Dipys and used the same strategy ie 20:80. Targeted the biggies and hotels for Dipys. Pandiyan, ITDC, TTDC, Madura Club et al supported me very well for Dipys range. I got a long term deal done with Kodai school, Kodaikanal Club in Kodai and Meenakshi agencies there. The problem with Meenakshi was delayed rather very delayed, payment but we managed it well. When in Chennai, I got to know of the very fizzy and great concoction called 'cricket' a soft drink, served in MCC. It was a mix of Orange squash with Limca. Tastes great! I, kind of introduced this concept in the clubs in Madurai and Kodai. This clicked there and paved way for Dipys orange squash. Also Sweet corn did well, surprisingly. I appointed door to door sales girls for Freedom in Madurai and Nagercoil and made them to give discount coupons to the homemakers for redemption in select retail on our Dipys range. This worked very well in both the places especially in Nagercoil. There was a retailer by name Veta Stores where I introduced this scheme and got a big push from him. Also in KK district places like Thakkalai and Marthandam I used the same strategy of Salem and pushed good quantity of Freedom in the hospitals there (Marthandam had around 4 or 5 polyclinics in 2 kms vicinity) and with that pushed Dipys in their canteens. Caught hold of a ship chandler-Cashmere Fernandes-in Tuticorin and got consistent business from him. Very unassuming customer and the shop situated in the midst of the vegetable market. He had his own way of pushing stocks in to the ships and despite competition from biggies like Alankar and Zeenat International. I played a lot with my liquor giveaways and it clicked. In Tirunelveli I got good support from Kavitha Stores. I developed some loyal and good customers for Dipys across all the districts. Some markets where it was waste of time, I ignored them. Also Dipys had, apart from Squashes, syrups too. Their rose syrup was world class but sadly Kissan and Rex along with Roof Afsa were the prefered brands. But later I realised Syrups were just flavours and today I dont waste my money on flavoured drinks...this awareness was missing with consumers those days and exploited fully by the brand owners like Rasna and Tang. Today's consumers are well informed thanks to the media.

Also Dipys ATL budget was zylch and hence heavily dependent on customer relationship and push strategy. As mentioned earlier, I exploited my 'liquor guy' tag very well in these markets too to gain confidence and entry in to retail shelves. It was quite tough as I was covering geographically a big market. But never got tired of travelling. I used to cover Nagercoil ex Madurai and return same day. Morning take the 5am bus, reach Nagercoil around 1030-11, finish the work by 6 and take the evening bus and come back by 12 midnight. As mentioned earlier, food was never a problem in Madurai, the city that never sleeps!!!

I realised very soon that HL was losing out in liquor in Madurai due to maximum of our time getting consumed with Dipys. So, I motivated the distributors to push Dipys and just managed the key outlets for Dipys myself. 

My task was to get entrenched with Ambika wines the WS for my market. It was tough as none of them spoke Tamil and also.very bossy. There was a guy in Phipsons, my name sake, who was able to get things done with them. Also Krithi and Shekar from McD, Kannan from MBDL gave me a good fight. This is where I met Krithi, Shekar and Kannan. (Sadly Kannan died at a very young age). Krithi's family became very close to me and so as Shekars. Shekar was Krithis boss. Krithi, despite being in McD used to work very hard.  I figured out the Phipson guy's closeness with the Ambica guys were due to the liquor parties thrown by him so I decided to do it differently. By the time, due to some issues I faced with the landlord and especially with one of his children, I shifted to a nearby place in SS Colony itself which was in the first floor of an independent building belonging to a Dr. It had a bedroom, attached bath and also a nice drawing room with a huge terrace both in the front and back. Very ideal for parties and the owners had absolutely no issue with visitors and parties. So, I organised for a get together with the Ambica guys and it turned out to be the mother of all parties. The beauty of the party was, I served JW Red Label (the bottle was that of JW but liquid was substituted by me and no one noticed it!) and the food I ordered from Arulanandam mess which was quite popular for their non veg. As the Andhrites were fond of rummy, I organised a card session too!! I also pulled in some of my friends to help me out and the party went on till 3 in the morning and some of these guys stayed back and slept in my place. Instant bonding, the purpose of the get together, was achieved in one night!!! 

So got Ambica thing cracked but I have to crack the market and the retailers. The system worked differently. In the morning time till around 1, retailers would arrive at the WS office and all the sales guys would swarm them the moment they arrive. Ambica had an indent sheet and the sales rep would grab literally the retailers by their side and would start pushing their products. And most of these guys had their second in command to manage things in the market. But I was all alone and had to manage both at the WS and also at the retail. So, I have to do something and fast also. So I approached MSR at Chennai and told him this practice of indent filling by reps, helping Shaw Wallace a lot and if he doesn't stop it, the loser would be UB group. I somehow hammered this point very strongly and he immediately passed a directive that no sales guy should be allowed inside the WS and can only come in the afternoon to collect sales figures. This strategy of mine helped me immensely as I was a market oriented guy and was confident that I can manage it better in the marketplace. While I could pull Bagpiper to No.1 position in its category it was quite tough for Honeybee except Kanyakumari. So I have to do something and get some numbers for HBB and hence exerted lots of pressure on my bosses for a scheme-first time in the trade. It was a 11 cases 1 case free and of this 3 cases has to be HBB. KC Kapoor was the GM Sales and he made the scheme a very complex one but somehow I convinced MSR to contribute from his WS margin and introduced the scheme with Ambica. The competition was shocked but by the time they came in to terms and came out with their own versions, I had a head start and the very first month HL crossed two truck loads in Madurai which was a big number for HL. And HBB was 250 cases out of that. I have to compromise on the HBB combo with some key retailers as otherwise I would have lost BP too. But finally the scheme was a huge hit but it was for a short duration only. But this helped as the retailers gave a big push which created awareness. But next couple of months there was utter chaos with all and sundry coming out with their own versions of 10+1 and MSR called me to discuss this and was given a nice dressing down by him for being the culprit of this 10+1 version. I played my cards well and requested him to ban these kind of offers and he obliged...so this 10+1 was scrapped immediately. So WS became peaceful and this paved way for companies to think differently and come out with something different. We introduced the monthly scheme circulars and settlements directly from the company. And HL was always prompt in settling the market claims. Shankaran my FSO helped me a lot in getting the claims passed at the branch office level. Things have started working well. I also worked out a dealers get together, first of its kind, in Madurai. Navratan Dugar, joined HL as RM and Tomy was his assistant. Abraham left HL. That get together became talk of the town for other reasons. The dealers got drunk and completely gone out of control with food plates flying around and people falling in the swimming pool. Dugar and Tomy ran for cover and I have to cut a sorry figure. But the silver lining was the next day my key customers felt so guilty and the next few indents topped HL brands (!). After seeing this fiasco most of the companies decided to keep away from dealers get together.

So many learnings and interesting episodes...

to be contd.....